Of the many things that bond Singaporeans together, most probably agree that food tops the list. Because of that too, publications around food reviews by food bloggers have been gaining a huge following over the past few years. These food reviews are widely shared, because information around the latest eateries and F&B outlets in Singapore are widely sought after.
Like most of us, food bloggers are human too, so we decided to speak to some prominent food bloggers in Singapore, and asked them what are they pet peeves when reviewing F&B outlets. Here’s what they have to say:
Daniel Ang, DanielFoodDiary.com
I won’t use the word “hate”, but the one thing we won’t like seeing is closed restaurants and cafes. There have been occasions where the social media accounts will reflect the business as “Open” but making a trip down reflects otherwise.
To be sure, we would check via telephone calls or emails, but even that may not guarantee that that it will open at the stipulated opening hours.
Seth Lui, SETHLUI.com
Hmm I’d say I hate getting special attention, or like if the owner wants to take a photo with me. There’s a reason I’m a food reviewer and not a lifestyle selfie influencer. It’s all about the food, not me.
Sometimes they bring out ‘special’ foods that aren’t on the menu as well, which becomes quite pointless to write about since our readers can’t order that. Keep it real guys.
For us at SETHLUI.com, as we receive quite a few invites daily, we need confirmation from the PR early on to schedule our tastings. It’s quite irritating if they take days to reply and only confirm the day before for a tasting happening the next day. Worst still, if they confirmed, then cancel the tasting on the day itself. We’ve had a couple of those which makes it quite inconvenient for us since we’re not getting paid for this invited tasting.
Personally I’m not a fan of group tastings as well, especially if it’s a dish to be shared. First, we have to wait for every one else to finish taking photos, hence the food gets cold and the real taste experience drops. Secondly, the food gets mangled up trying to divide 2 poached eggs 7 ways. Let’s not even mention the horrors of double-dipping.
Nathaneal, Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow
Bad service and bad-tempered servers who, after reading reviews, go online to abuse the reviewers. And restaurants ‘gentrifying’ street food selling it at 7 times the price at hawker centres.
Jasper, Six And Seven
I have a couple of pet peeves when it comes to reviewing restaurants, though I think the biggest is probably dealing with rude or pushy PR people.
I’ve had cases where the PR surprises you with a whole list of requirements right after you accept the tasting invitation—demanding that you mention the establishment or chef in a particular angle, and that the article must be published by a certain date (with an extremely quick turnaround). And this is even before I have actually dined there.
There’s also been a case where I’ve published a review, and the PR person reaches out to check if I have published the article (to which I answer yes), followed by asking me to provide links to the article, as well as all relevant social shares made—instead of doing their own media monitoring or Googling for it.
That said, there are also lots of other PR people in the industry who are extremely polite and make the overall experience a delight.
Melody Yap, Lady Iron Chef
Some things we hate and cannot tolerate:
– when they don’t even bother ironing the table cloth/ dining mat
– when cutleries are of different lengths (you know how some places use a variety of forks/ knives/ spoons, and they would give us a piece each from different set)
